i've only got forever (and forever is fine)
by shineyma
Summary: Ward's not the only one on the team who grew up with a timer on his wrist. Five ways the rest of the team meet (or fail to meet) their soulmates. Chapter two - Soulmates in the aftermath: of Bahrain, of New York, and of Peru. [Part two of the "before you fall" series]
1. just take your time

A/N: Okay, so this is, obviously, neither the promised side-story nor the next chapter of sometimes, but I've had Jemma's section sitting in my snips folder for ages and I suddenly got inspired for May's, and then the rest of them showed up. So you get this. I hope you enjoy!

Title comes from The Cab's "Vegas Skies." Thanks for reading, and, as always, please be gentle if you review.

* * *

Melinda May is twenty-seven when she meets her soulmate.

She's on a mission in Krakow, running back-up for Victoria Hand, who's undercover with a group of child smugglers. It's been a horrible few weeks, watching the way the children suffer, but they can't move on the group yet. They haven't yet identified all of the group's buyers, and if a single one gets away the group will just reform somewhere else, and that can't be allowed. So Melinda and Victoria and the rest of their team have had to just stand back and watch as children suffer unspeakable torment.

Melinda has made a silent promise to each one of them; those who torment them will suffer a thousand times worse at the hands of SHIELD. She'll make sure of it. They all will.

So she's in a terrible mood as she makes her way back to the safe house after a twelve-hour shift on watch. Today she was tracking one of the higher-ups in the group, hoping he'd lead her to his employers, but it was a dead end, and she spent all day following him around downtown Krakow in the pouring rain.

The safe house is not in the kind of neighborhood where people own cars, so she's being forced to walk, and the rain hasn't really let up. The constant downpour, on top of her terrible day and the horrible mission, is her only excuse for not seeing him until the last minute.

Well, it's not that she doesn't see him, so much as she absently notes his presence, dismisses him as 'not a threat', and ignores him. Which is a bad idea, because he trips on the uneven pavement, loses his balance, and knocks her down.

She has enough time to avoid him, but pulling out those kinds of reflexes would blow her cover as a factory worker, so down she goes. She does manage to adjust her fall so she doesn't hurt herself, but it's still annoying—the perfect ending to an awful day on a torturous assignment.

The man immediately scrambles to his feet and offers his hand, apologizing profusely, and she looks up at him as she accepts it, intending to tell him that it's fine. (It's not like it's his fault that this is a shitty neighborhood with poorly paved sidewalks.)

Time stops.

They both freeze, holding hands, he bending down to reach her and she still on the ground.

She feels oddly giddy, all of her concerns melted away, and it's a bit like the rush she gets when she plays a successful prank, except a thousand times better. It's…amazing. She can hear his timer going off, and it's the most beautiful sound she's ever heard. She has a brief moment of longing for her own timer, removed when she graduated the Academy.

Realizing she's still on the ground, she tugs on her soulmate's hand a little to get his attention, not wanting to pull him down, too. It's not that she couldn't get up on her own—she's a trained SHIELD specialist, of course she could—it's just. She doesn't want to let go of his hand.

He snaps out of his shock and helps her stand, back to apologizing.

"It's fine," she tells him, then curses herself. She's technically undercover, and her cover identity doesn't speak English, just Mandarin and basic Polish. She's never in her life made that kind of rookie mistake, not even when she actually was a rookie.

"You speak English," her soulmate realizes. "Listen, I am so, so sorry, this sidewalk is just too—"

There are protocols for this kind of situation. She should call in to HQ immediately so that a background check can be run on her soulmate to determine if he's a threat to their mission. She's already compromised her cover with him, and she needs to get him off of the street and into the safe house. If he is a threat to the mission, he can be subdued. If he's not…well, she can hardly introduce herself as a SHIELD agent in the middle of the street, even if it does look abandoned.

"It's fine," she repeats. "I'm not hurt."

"Good," he says, relieved. "That's good."

"The weather's horrible," she says. It's a statement of such blindingly obvious fact that she gives her soulmate a few points for not rolling his eyes at her, but it works as a segue. "What do you say we continue this conversation indoors? My house is just down the street."

"Good idea," he agrees. "Lead the way."

As they walk, he introduces himself as Marek Symanski. She avoids the question of her own name by asking about his fluency in English, and he tells her he teaches it at the nearby lower secondary school. He's obviously happy in his career, enthusing about the opportunity to work with children and teach them such a useful skill. She can't help smiling at his zeal.

"So, you didn't give me your name," he reminds her as they reach the safe house.

The door opens as they reach it, and Agent Sarah Jackson frowns at her.

"Meet my soulmate," Melinda says dryly, motioning to Marek.

"Oh," Jackson says, and steps back to allow them into the house.

Marek is starting to look a little suspicious, so Melinda leads him down the hall to the living room. The room is specially shielded to interfere with long-range listening devices, so it's safe to talk here.

"My name is Melinda May," she says. "I'm a SHIELD agent, and I'm technically undercover at the moment."

Marek stares at her for a long moment.

"So…I should hold off on mentioning you to my parents?" he asks finally.

Melinda smiles. "It might be a good idea. But there's no reason we can't get to know each other in here."

"Of course," he agrees at once. "Anything you like."

Melinda exchanges a look with Jackson, who nods in understanding. She'll alert HQ while Melinda keeps Marek busy. It's really just a formality, though. Melinda already knows, as she and Marek sit down on one of the couches, that the background check will come up clean.

She knows, with the same complete certainty she always feels during field work, that Marek is a good man, and the two of them will be just fine.

She thinks she'll keep her own name, though. Melinda Symanski just doesn't have the same ring to it.

xy

Leo Fitz gets his timer on his tenth birthday. The nearest Timer Office is thirty kilometers away, and his mother wakes him early so they can get there before traffic hits. He's nervous and excited, a little jittery, so Mum lets him bring the toaster along. He's been begging for weeks to be allowed to fix it, and just that would be an excellent birthday present. Getting his timer on top of that?

Best birthday ever.

The Timer Office is still closed when they reach it, so they sit in the car park and wait. Leo's almost positive the toaster is fixed, not that he'll be able to test it until they get home, and he explains to Mum everything he's done with it. She smiles and nods, the way she always does, and he considers starting again, trying to explain it with more basic words, but gives it up as a bad job. His Mum's not stupid, not by a long shot, but she's not a genius, not like him.

He hopes his soulmate will be. That would be nice, wouldn't it? If he and his soulmate shared a fascination with science and engineering. Perhaps they could invent things together. He'd like that.

When the office opens, they're the first ones in. The nurse doesn't make them wait at all, just takes them back and, after a quick test for compatibility, administers the sedative that will keep Leo unconscious during the procedure. He's grateful for it; there's no way he'd be able to sit still during the procedure if he were at all conscious.

When he wakes up, he excitedly checks his timer, and is disappointed to find it blank. Still, all that means is that his soulmate is younger than him, which, statistically speaking—

"You just have to be patient, love," Mum says as they leave the office. "It won't be long, I'm sure."

But it is long. The years pass, and he keeps waiting, but his timer never clicks on.

So he buries himself in his work, and he's not lonely, not really. He's got Simmons, after all, and she's his sister in all the ways that matter, and they work together so wonderfully that they _actually_ end up creating a PowerPoint presentation entitled "Yes, We're Sure We're Not Soulmates" and carrying around flash drives with the file wherever they go. They call themselves FitzSimmons and they invent dozens of useful tools and plan out a hundred more, and she's everything he ever hoped for in a soulmate, except platonic, and he's perfectly content with that.

He's not miserable. He's not desperate. He is, in fact, fairly happy, especially once he and Simmons finish at the Academy and get started on actual work.

But he can't help hoping. And the first thing he does every morning when he wakes up is check his timer.

It stays blank.

xy

Mary Sue Poots is probably eleven when Sister Mary Katherine takes her to the Timer Office. No one at St. Agnes actually knows when her birthday is, so they made her wait a few extra months after her assigned birthday, just to be safe. Everyone knows it's dangerous for kids under ten to get timers—although no one has actually explained to Mary Sue exactly why that is—so she's been forced to wait, asking every other day if it's time yet, has it been long enough yet, please can we go today?

But the day is finally here. Today, she's going to get a timer. A timer that will connect her to her soulmate, whoever he is. She hopes he's tall, and nice, and that he'll get her jokes. She hopes he'll be impressed by how good she is with computers. She hopes he'll help her pick a new first name, one that will sound good with his last name.

But if he's short and grumpy and a stick in the mud, that'll be okay, too. What's important is that he's her soulmate, and he'll want to keep her. Whoever he is, he won't be sending her back, the way the Brodys and the McKinnons and the Carters did. He'll be happy to meet her, she knows he will, and he won't send her away.

She won't send him away, either. She won't let things happen the way they do in all of those romance movies, where someone misunderstands someone else and soulmates spend months hating each other. No way. She's gonna be totally honest and open and show him exactly who she is, and he'll love her because he's her soulmate and that's how things work.

If he's got a big family, she'll become a part of it, and if he's an orphan, too, they'll make their own family. Neither one of them will ever be alone again.

And even if she has to wait forever, like Kelly whose timer has twelve whole years on it, she'll at least know that he's out there, waiting for her like she's waiting for him.

She can't sit still in the waiting room. She keeps bouncing out of her chair and running to look at something on the other side of the room, then running back and sitting back down. Then she realizes she doesn't even remember what she just looked at, so she goes back over. Rinse and repeat, again and again. Honestly, she doesn't even care what's in the room; she's just too excited to sit there patiently.

Well, she's never good at patience, but at least this time she has a reason!

Sister Mary Katherine is unusually tolerant about it, just smiling after her instead of snapping at her to sit back down. Even nuns have soulmates, Mary Sue guesses, and maybe Sister Mary Katherine was excited, too, when she was Mary Sue's age. (Not Mary Sue's age, Mary Sue had to wait _six extra months_, which is totally unfair.)

When the nurse finally calls them back, Mary Sue runs over so fast she nearly knocks the woman over. Instead of frowning at her, the way grown-ups always do, the nurse (Sally, says her nametag) just pats her on the head.

"Excited, are we?" Sally asks.

Well, duh. Mary Sue doesn't want to be rude (because what if they refuse to give her a timer as punishment?), so she just nods.

"Well come on then, sweetheart," Sally tells her. "Get on back to room twelve and have a seat. Let's get you a timer!"

Mary Sue skips to room twelve. She's not usually a skipping kind of girl, but come _on_! She's about to get her timer!

When she gets there, she scrambles up on to the exam table and sits on the very edge, kicking her feet. Sister Mary Katherine doesn't say anything about that, either, just takes a seat in a chair off to the side.

"Okay," Sally says. "First things first, we've gotta test you for compatibility. It won't take but a second, and then we'll get you a little shot that will help you sleep while we…"

She's been holding up a little scanner to Mary Sue's wrist as she speaks, and she trails off when it beeps. Her bright, friendly smile fades away.

"What?" Mary Sue asks. "What is it?"

Sally doesn't answer. She turns to Sister Mary Katherine instead. "Ma'am, can I have a word with you in the hall?"

"Of course," Sister Mary Katherine agrees. She looks very serious as she stands.

"What? What's wrong? Tell me!" Mary Sue demands.

"Just a second, sweetheart," Sally tells her, and she walks out of the room, followed by Sister Mary Katherine.

Mary Sue doesn't even breathe while the grown-ups are in the hall. She thinks she knows what's going on, but—no. No, it can't be. God is love, right? He wouldn't do this to her. After everything, after taking away her parents and not letting her stay with any of her foster parents, He wouldn't take this away, too.

Sister Mary Katherine comes back into the room alone, and she has bad-news face. Mary Sue's very familiar with that face. That's the this-isn't-working face, the you're-not-a-good-fit face, the sorry-maybe-next-time face.

"No," Mary Sue says. Her eyes burn and she knows she's going to cry. She hasn't cried since the Brodys sent her back, but she's gonna do it here, if Sister Mary Katherine says what she's so clearly about to say. "No, please, Sister—"

"I'm so sorry, Mary Sue," Sister Mary Katherine says. "They can't give you a timer. You're not compatible."

She thinks she might be screaming, but she's not sure. She knows she's crying because she can't see, her eyes can't focus, but all she would see anyway is Sister Mary Katherine's shoulder, as she hugs her close. Sister Mary Katherine's never hugged her before. She doesn't know if Sister Mary Katherine's ever hugged _any_ of the kids at the orphanage before.

She tries to fight Sister Mary Katherine, tries to shove her away, because Sister Mary Katherine is a liar. She's a _liar_, she has to be, her and Sally the nurse, because there's _no way_ Mary Sue doesn't get a timer. It's not _fair_. Sister Mary Katherine holds on, though, just stands there and holds her, and eventually Mary Sue just collapses against her, sobbing. She's not screaming anymore, if she ever was, but she still can't really talk. All she can say is 'no', over and over again.

She doesn't have parents, or a birthday, or even a _name_ that's really hers. And it's never bothered her all that much, because she knew that her soulmate was waiting for her somewhere, and she'd get everything she ever needed from him.

But she won't. She'll never find him, and she'll never have _anything_.

xy

Phil Coulson is a romantic at heart. He always has been. The entire reason that he decides to remain a field agent instead of becoming a specialist is because he's not willing to give up his timer. His instructors promise him, again and again, that his soulmate's timer will still work, that he'll find her even if he doesn't have his timer, but honestly, why risk it?

So he follows the track to become a field agent, and he never regrets it. He likes still having his timer on his wrist, counting down the years—decades, actually—until he meets his soulmate. He regrets that he has to wait so long, but he's sure she'll be worth it, whoever she is. And in the meantime, it's nice to have the timer running, the comforting blue glow a wordless reassurance that wherever she is, she's alive and well.

x

He's thirty six when he's sent to Portland to investigate the potential of a candidate for the Index. One Marcus Daniels has been accused of stalking Audrey Nathan, a cellist, who claims that Daniels shorted out the power for her whole block.

Phil is well aware of how close his timer is to zero. Chances are he'll be meeting his soulmate on this particular assignment—perhaps someone staying at the same hotel, or someone who works in it—but he can't afford to focus on it. He pulls on a black wristband, capable of blocking out his timer's glow, so that he won't be able to look at it and count down with it. There's the possibility that Daniels may become violent, and he can't be distracted.

His first stop in Portland is Audrey Nathan's house. The police dismissed her claims, so SHIELD doesn't have the whole story of what happened. He'll need to interview her before he can get anywhere on Daniels.

He puts on his best harmless I'm-here-to-help-you expression and rings the doorbell. He's heard the tape of her hysterical call to 911, and he fully sympathizes with this woman. Regardless of whether Daniels actually has any powers, he's clearly frightened Miss Nathan, and the local police's outright refusal to believe her can only have made things worse.

"Miss Nathan?" he asks when the door opens. "I'm Agent—"

His voice catches in his throat as soon as he makes eye contact.

It hits him like a wave, like walking into the ocean and standing there and being knocked down, but by peace instead of force. He feels strangely weightless and a little dizzy. He vaguely hears their timers chiming in unison, but it barely registers.

"Oh," Audrey says softly.

He has no idea who moves first, but suddenly he's kissing her. Maybe it was him, because he's inside the house, and she backs down the hallway so he can kick the door shut, all without pulling away from each other.

Her hands are cold as they cup his face, but her mouth is warm and sweet and perfect. It doesn't last nearly long enough before she's pulling back, breathless.

"Agent who?" she asks.

"Right," he says, realizing he never finished his introduction. "Phil Coulson. I'm with SHIELD."

"Nice to meet you," she says happily. Then she kisses him again.

He knows there are protocols, that he should be calling this in to HQ, that he should alert the other agents here in Portland with him so that one of them can take the lead, that this is not the time for kissing, but.

Well.

A few more minutes can't hurt, right?

xy

Jemma Simmons doesn't spend much time thinking of her soulmate. She's never obsessed over the idea of him the way her classmates do—not that there's anything wrong with dreaming about one's soulmate, of course. In fact, Jemma has spent her fair share of time watching the numbers on her timer click down.

It's just that her timer says her soulmate is in the future, years and years away, and in the present there are things to learn, science to be done, and discoveries to be made. So it isn't so much that she doesn't think about her soulmate as it is she just thinks about science more.

Until one day she looks down and the timer is blank. It's not red, like it would be if her soulmate died, and it's not green, like she's met him and somehow failed to notice—it's just blank, the numbers wiped away as if they were never there. She's never heard of something like that happening before, and for the first time in her life, she panics.

She's sixteen years old, a student at the SHIELD Academy, far away from her parents and working on her SHIELD certification and her second PhD concurrently. The first person she goes to, naturally, is Fitz. She knows he's done his research into timers, born of his own timer's continued blank state, and she's sure he'll know.

Except he doesn't. He apologizes for the lack (ridiculous boy) and offers the suggestion of Dr. Weaver, who, in addition to running the Academy, was part of the team who designed the most recent iteration of timers. It's a sign of how much she's panicking that she didn't think of Dr. Weaver on her own, and Fitz walks her to Dr. Weaver's office, perhaps concerned that Jemma will faint or become even more hysterical on the way there.

Dr. Weaver, of course, has an instant answer.

"It's nothing to worry about, Jemma," Dr. Weaver says. "It just means that your soulmate's timer has been lost."

"Lost?" Jemma echoes. "Lost _how_? Like he—he's had his hand chopped off, or—?"

"That's certainly a possibility," Dr. Weaver acknowledges. "But it's probably nothing so drastic. It is possible to remove timers, you know. In fact, it's standard procedure for government agents who work in covert operations. It's entirely possible that your soulmate is one of our specialists—they all have their timers removed, to keep them from interfering in undercover operations."

Jemma takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, imagines the panic going with it. Dr. Weaver's words make perfect sense, and are in fact quite encouraging. It would be nice if her soulmate were a SHIELD agent—she wouldn't have to lie to him about her work. However, when last she checked her timer it said ten years, so she's not likely to meet him anytime soon. There's no use thinking about it now, is there?

She thanks Dr. Weaver, apologizes for her panic, excuses herself from the room, and then resolves to put the whole thing from her mind. That is, as soon as she explains the situation to Fitz, who is waiting patiently in the hallway.

He can't quite hide the way he feels about the revelation as they head for the Boiler Room.

"A specialist?" he asks, clearly disgusted. "Really, Simmons?"

"There's no guarantee that he's a specialist," she reminds him. "But, even if he is, there's no shame in it. Specialists do important work, Fitz."

"Yes, yes, of course they do," he agrees impatiently. "I just would have thought your soulmate would be someone a little more…cerebral."

"Oh, Fitz," she says, shaking her head. "Why on Earth would I need a scientist for a soulmate? That's what I have _you_ for, silly."

He looks pleased, and Jemma congratulates herself. What she said is the truth, of course, but it also serves to reassure Fitz of his importance. Jemma knows he's slightly insecure about his place in her life. His timer has been blank since he got it, and she knows he worries (though he would never admit it) that once she meets her soulmate she'll forget about him, and he'll be left alone.

It certainly doesn't help that everyone who learns that the two of them aren't soulmates immediately warns that Jemma's soulmate, whoever he might be, will never tolerate their close relationship. Perhaps that will stop, now that her timer is blank as well. She can only hope.

(It doesn't, as it happens. Jemma and Fitz hear it many, many times over the years.)

x

She's consciously aware, when she turns twenty six, that she'll be meeting her soulmate sometime in the next year. She acknowledges it, takes a moment to hope that things will work out, and then puts it aside. She has a lot to worry about—she and Fitz are finally getting a field assignment (despite not actually passing their field tests), and they'll soon be off to join a mobile response team. The final preparations are still underway—apparently they're still in need of a specialist—but they're expected to begin the assignment sometime in the next month. She can't wait, is honestly extremely excited, but there's a lot of work to do before they start.

x

As it happens, the assignment begins thirteen days after her birthday. She's thrilled to report to the plane that will be their base of operations, but Fitz is less enthusiastic, and they've been sniping at each other all week.

Still, it's nothing major. They'll be past it in a few days, they always are. In the meantime, he really _should_ have consulted her before he built the prototype night-night gun. Honestly, she's a genius, not a witch; she can't create paralysis out of _nothing_.

Fitz is trying to instruct her on the subject of physics (the nerve!) when they're distracted from their argument by the thump of something falling to the ground. Concerned for their equipment, they look over, and find a man standing in the cargo bay staring at them.

This must be Agent Ward, the team specialist. Agent Coulson told her yesterday that Ward wasn't sold on the idea of being part of a team, which would certainly explain his clear annoyance as he asks for FitzSimmons (and who could have predicted _that_ nickname would still be so widespread, a decade later?).

She leaves Fitz to deal with Ward's comm receiver and fetches one of the swabs for a DNA sample. She doesn't bother to ask permission first—which is terribly rude of her, she'll have to apologize later, she's just still a little irritated with Fitz—just swabs Ward's mouth.

She's in the middle of expressing her how impressed she is with the DNA-encoded comm system when she looks up and makes eye contact with him.

Oh. _Oh_.

She's filled with electricity. All of her nerves seem to be on end (which is a ridiculous and unscientific notion) and all of her attention is focused on the man in front of her. It feels like presenting her first doctoral dissertation, the way her heart stopped and her mind blanked the moment the committee ended the session so they could discuss her presentation—except in a good way.

There's not a single thought in her head, and she doesn't even mind it.

She's peripherally aware of Fitz swearing, and the chiming of her timer, and the fact that the DNA swab has dropped out of her suddenly nerveless fingers, but none of that matters. She was speaking, wasn't she? She should finish her sentence, except she has absolutely no recollection of what that was. Well, she needs to say _something_.

"Hi," she manages.

"Hi," he says. Slowly, deliberately, he takes her arm in his hand and turns it so that her timer is visible. The display is green, the exact date and time showing, and the evidence is conclusive. Agent Ward is her soulmate.

Well. That's unexpected, isn't it?

* * *

A/N: There might be another chapter of this, showing where May/Marek and Coulson/Audrey stand in the present time, as well as a little of Jemma's thoughts on Grant, but I promise I'll finish and post the side-story first. It's almost done, I swear!


	2. we'll stop the clock together

A/N: So, I've got a case study (a major part of my final grade) due in ten hours, and instead of working on it, I wrote this! I hope you guys appreciate it, because I have a feeling my professor won't. Oh well.

Thanks so much for your reviews and faves! I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint.

Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review!

* * *

BAHRAIN

After Bahrain, and everything she loses there, Melinda is put on indefinite traumatic leave. Phil is quiet and solemn as he hands her a plane ticket to Krakow, and she'd like to reassure him, but she honestly doesn't have the words. So she just accepts the ticket and goes home to her husband.

Marek is surprised and concerned to see her. Melinda's not injured, not really, but he must read something on her face, because he doesn't greet her with his usual exuberance. Instead, he offers her a cup of tea, then makes it for her while keeping up a steady stream of meaningless chatter. It's what he always does for her after her nightmares, and she aches a little at the well-meaning gesture.

It feels a little like a nightmare. _She_ feels like a nightmare. Like a monster that a little girl fears is hiding in her closet. She wonders if Enas will have nightmares about her.

The thought doesn't hurt. Nothing hurts right now, not really. She feels numb and empty, like everything inside of her has been scooped out, leaving nothing but a hollow shell. Sitting at the familiar table in the brightly lit kitchen—the kitchen they decorated together, arguing over counter tops and color schemes like either one of them had any idea what they were doing—feels like a lie. Like she's undercover as Melinda May, soulmate. Wife. Human being.

"Here, _rybko_," Marek says, placing a mug on the table in front of her. "It's a new blend; I think you'll like it."

She wraps her hands around the mug, lets the warmth seep into her palms, but doesn't make a move to pick it up. Marek waits for a moment, then sits down in the chair next to her. He lays his hand on her arm and leaves it there. It warms her more than the mug does.

They sit in silence for a long while as her tea slowly cools. Neither one of them moves. Melinda barely breathes. The ticking of the second hand on the clock above the sink sounds absurdly loud, but it can't drown out the pounding of her heart.

_Let it go_, Phil said. She wishes it were that easy.

"I know you can't tell me what happened," Marek says eventually. It's been at least an hour; her tea has long since gone cold. "But…will you be all right?"

She means to say yes, of course she will. Instead, what comes out is, "I don't know."

Marek sighs, squeezes her arm gently, and stands. He takes the mug from her hands, pours it out in the sink, and leaves it there to be washed later. Then he comes back to the table and tugs her gently out of her seat.

"I don't know what time it is where you just came from," he says. "But here it's very, very late. Would you prefer a shower or a bath?"

For a moment, she almost wants to cry. It should be impossible, how this man—this man, who has never raised a hand in anger to _anyone_, who has never held a gun, who has never taken a life—can understand her so very, very well. But understand her he does.

She can't climb into bed beside him right now. Not without washing away the violence that still coats her like a second—and third, and fourth, and fifth—skin. (Maybe not ever. But she doesn't want to think about that.)

"I'll take a shower," she answers after a moment. "You can go to bed."

He ignores the suggestion, as she knew he would, taking her hand instead of replying and leading her down the hallway in the direction of their bedroom. She registers, perhaps belatedly, that the wallpaper that used to be in the hall is gone, replaced by a cheery blue paint.

"You got rid of the wallpaper," she says.

Marek glances at the wall. "Yes. I'm sorry, I know you wanted to help with the painting, but…it's summer."

She knows what that means; he got bored, with no students to teach, no lessons to plan, and no papers to grade. It's an old habit of his to tackle projects around the house during the summers, even though he always swears he'll wait for her to get home. Once she returned from a mission in Hong Kong to find that he'd built them a deck in the backyard. Or he'd tried, at least. It was a bit of a disaster, and the memory of his sheepish explanation almost makes her smile.

"It looks nice," she says. She reaches for a joke, something about how many tries it must've taken him to get it this even, a comment about whether there's paint all over the floor, hiding under this rug…but there's nothing there. She can't think of a single thing to say.

Marek pauses, possibly waiting for the snarky comment, then says, "Thank you."

He opens the door to the bedroom and stands back so she can enter first. She heads directly for the bathroom on the other side of the room, stripping as she goes. Suddenly, she's desperate for another shower. She's already had seven since Bahrain, one after every debrief, but it feels like the dust and dirt and blood is still coating her, and she hates it.

She doesn't want it here. The violence, the death, the fear—these things have no place here, in her home. In Marek's home. It's not supposed to touch him. Ever.

She hears Marek inhale sharply and pauses in the act of opening the shower door. She turns to look at him and finds him staring at the bruising on her ribs.

"That looks painful," he comments. His voice is steady, but he's got a white-knuckled grip on the doorframe.

He hurts for her. He always does.

She tries to find the words to reassure him, but she has nothing. She can't say she's fine, because she's really, really not.

Marek lets go of the doorframe and joins her next to the shower. He runs a hand over her bruising, his touch feather-light, not enough to hurt. It hurts anyway—that he has to see it. He murmurs something in Polish, something her mind is too tired to translate, then presses a gentle kiss to her forehead.

"Take your shower," he says. "You have fifteen minutes."

She nods her acknowledgement. That hurts, too—that he's so worried about her mental state that he's setting a time limit. She knows he's thinking of the time he found her in the shower at three in the morning, curled up and shivering on the floor, trying to wash away blood that wasn't really there. She'd been in the shower for nearly two hours by the time he found her.

He hurts when she hurts, and she hurts so very often.

She turns the water on, as hot as she can stand, and tries to scald away everything that happened in Bahrain. It doesn't work.

She gets out of the shower when her fifteen minutes are up, dries herself off mechanically, and walks naked into the bedroom. Marek's sitting on the end of the bed, his head bowed. She recognizes the words his mouth silently forms and realizes that he's praying. Praying for her, she thinks.

She's not religious, not really. It would horrify her mother to hear her say it, but she left the faith of her childhood behind long ago. Still, she's, as ever, touched by Marek's care for her. Asking the highest power, the God he believes in, to intercede on her behalf—well, that implies a lot, doesn't it?

It shouldn't surprise her that he loves her. It usually doesn't. But right now…right now, she's struck by just how unworthy of him she is. This wonderful, gentle man, who loves so deeply and cares so much…

She doesn't deserve him.

"Melinda," he says, standing. "_Rybko_, what is it?"

She's surprised to realize that she's crying. Marek steps forward and wraps his arms around her, and she returns the embrace desperately, clutching at his shoulders like he'll disappear if she doesn't hold on tight enough. Now that the tears have started, they don't stop, and she sobs into his shoulder for what feels like forever, mourning what she's lost.

She cries for Enas, who will most certainly be traumatized. She cries for Hatam, for Kadim, for Abasi—good men who have been tainted by SHIELD. She cries for Marek, who can never, ever know what happened yesterday, and will never understand how much better off he would be without her.

All the while, Marek holds her, rocking her back and forth and reassuring her in a mix of Polish and his broken Mandarin. He's been trying to learn, for her, but it's not an easy language and he's not very good at it. She's tried to tell him it's unnecessary, but he's determined. He says that if she can learn Polish, he can learn Mandarin. (Apparently, the fact that she learned Polish long before she met him is irrelevant.)

The memory, and the fact that he just told her not to wash the llama, is enough to make her laugh. Marek pauses in stroking her hair and leans back to look at her face.

"Was that wrong?" he asks, in a tone that makes her suspect he did it on purpose.

"Just a little," she says. She lets go of him and runs her hands over her face.

"Are you ready to try and sleep, now?"

"Yes," she says. The crying, surprisingly, helped a little. She doesn't feel so numb anymore, at least. Marek hands her a shirt—one of his—and she pulls it on, lets him tuck her into bed, and then curls up against his side when he joins her.

She's not worthy of this man. She's done terrible things, the most recent of which may well have broken her beyond repair. She's never given him the time, the attention, that he deserves. She's always running off, called to duty by SHIELD, sent on missions where she crosses off criminals and innocents both in the name of global security. She multiplies the blood on her hands when she should be at home, with him.

But she loves him. More than she ever thought possible.

SHIELD's call isn't as strong as it used to be. She doesn't know if she'll ever be able to pick up a gun again. She doesn't know if she's suited for combat anymore. She doesn't know if she _wants_ to be.

There's a SHIELD base a few hours away—strictly Administration, no Ops or SciOps. She thinks, as she moves a bit closer to Marek, that she might look into it in the morning. She doesn't know if she's suited for a desk job, either, but it might be time to find out.

She doesn't deserve Marek, but she's not letting him go. She's never leaving him again. She just doesn't think she could stand it.

x

NEWYORK

He doesn't know why, or how it's even possible, but it takes Phil until he leaves Tahiti (a magical place) to realize that his timer is gone. He's in Dr. Streiten's office when it happens, discussing his physical therapy. He finished it in Tahiti, but Streiten is still concerned, and he's hesitant about approving Phil's return to field work. Phil's trying to convince Streiten that he'll be fine when he happens to look down and realize his wrist is empty.

He doesn't know how he didn't notice it before—he should have seen it when he got dressed this morning, when he put on his cufflinks. Was it there yesterday? The day before? He can't quite remember.

"Agent Coulson?" Streiten says, obviously concerned. "Are you all right?"

"My timer's gone," he says blankly. He feels like he's been punched in the chest. Actually, he feels like he's been _stabbed_ in the chest. Again.

Streiten draws in a slow breath. "You…didn't know?"

"No, I...how did I not notice?" he asks himself. "How long has it been gone?"

"You've been through a severe trauma," Streiten soothes. "It's natural not to focus on small details."

Phil chooses to ignore that Streiten just called his timer a _small detail_, and instead focuses on the more pertinent question, which Streiten hasn't answered. "How long has it been gone?"

"You were dead for eight seconds, Agent Coulson," Streiten reminds him seriously. "Your timer…disengaged."

"Disen—of course it did," he realizes. It must've; he's already been told that everyone thinks he's dead, and everyone must include Audrey. If it didn't, there's no way he'd have gone this long without seeing her. She would've shown up in Tahiti, protocol and secrecy be damned. "So Audrey…?"

Streiten clears his throat. "I think you'd be better off taking that up with Director Fury, Agent Coulson."

"I will," he decides, suddenly resolved. He knows the protocol, knows that his survival has been classified Level Seven, and Audrey isn't even part of the agency, but…

She's his _soulmate_. Nick will make an exception. He has to.

He doesn't.

"I'm sorry, Coulson," Nick says, later, in his office. "I really am. But the Avengers think you're dead, and it needs to stay that way. This stays Level Seven."

"But Audrey—" he starts to protest.

"Audrey isn't Level Seven," Nick interrupts. "She's not SHIELD at all."

"She's my soulmate," Phil says plainly. "I don't _care_ about her clearance level—"

"Then care about her," Nick interrupts again. "You spent _months_ in Tahiti, Coulson. She's finally started to accept that you're dead. You want to go undo all the progress she's made?"

Phil sits back in his chair. "You're having her watched?"

Nick rolls his eye. "Of course I'm having her watched, are you kidding me?"

"Is she—how is she?" he asks. His mouth is dry, and he wishes he had some water. He can't believe how selfish he's been; it's been _months_ since his 'death'—why is he only just now thinking of Audrey?

"She's getting better," Nick says. He taps his fingers on his desk. "Barton and Romanoff have been visiting her. She went back to work two weeks ago."

At that, he feels even worse. Audrey was so upset that she took months off of work, and he never even spared her a thought. What the hell is wrong with him?

"She'll be better if she knows I'm alive," he says, forcing down the disgust he feels at himself. He has no excuse for not thinking of Audrey before, but he's thinking of her now. He needs to do what's best for her, clearance levels be damned, and it's not best for her to keep mourning him when he's alive and well.

Nick's expression softens, a little. "And what happens when you die again?"

"What?"

"It's a dangerous line of work, Coulson," Nick reminds him. "Sooner or later, you're going to die again, and next time we might not be able to save you. What happens when you're really dead, and she knows that the last time you died you came back months later?"

Phil swallows.

"She'd never accept it," Nick says gently. For him, at least. "If she knows you came back once, she'll expect you to do it again. She'll never move on. She'll just spend the rest of her life expecting you to come back."

"And I can't promise that," Phil finishes quietly. He looks away from Nick, folds his hands in his lap, and swallows again.

He tries to picture never seeing Audrey again. Never surprising her after practice, never sending flowers to the performances he can't make, never making soup for her when she invariably catches a cold in November.

Never taking leave to see her. Never having her cheerful smile to chase away the faces of the dead that haunt him. Never hearing her laugh again. Never calling her up at three in the morning, when he's on the other side of the world and can't sleep for missing her.

If she's moving on, does he have the right to ruin that? She'll be happy to see him, he knows she will, but Nick's right. She'll never accept that he's really dead, the next time this happens. He knows how her mind works. She'll wait, months and years, afraid to move on—afraid to betray him by giving up on him.

He's been too selfish to consider her during his recovery. Is he selfish enough to interrupt hers? Is he selfish enough to ensure that she never moves on from him? Can he put his own happiness—because there's no way he can be happy without her—ahead of hers?

No. No, he's not.

"I understand, sir," he says finally.

"I'm sorry, Phil," Nick says. He sounds sincere. "I really am."

He stands, then hesitates. "Will you—can you—?"

"We'll keep an eye on her," Nick promises. He stands and walks around the desk to join Phil. "I sure as hell can't keep Barton and Romanoff away from her."

He can't be amused at that. Actually, it makes him feel worse—that Barton and Romanoff are loyal enough to him that they're looking after his soulmate, making sure she's okay, when he can't even tell them that he's alive.

Nick rests a hand on his shoulder. "It's better this way."

"Of course, sir," Phil agrees.

He does honestly believe that. He won't live forever; it's better for Audrey if he doesn't interrupt her progress in moving on. If he does, she'll just have to do it again someday. It's better this way.

That doesn't make it any less painful, though.

x

PERU

In the wake of the disaster in Peru, the Bus remains at the Slingshot for repairs. The quick patch job she and Fitz worked up was enough to get them here safely, but no one really wants to risk flying all the way back to the Hub with a giant hole in the side of the plane.

They're given rooms in the base, since the cabin level is covered in broken glass and other debris. The lab is, too, but it gets fixed up before bedtime on their first night there—it's not that difficult, just a matter of cleaning up the broken glass and replacing the doors. And windows. And a few tables.

But it's certainly nothing compared to the disaster that is the cabin level, so it's not long at all before she and Fitz are able to get back to work. Grant gets back to work, too—he's in the cargo bay every morning and evening, going through a very strenuous (but very attractive) exercise routine.

The first morning she joined him, before Peru, was just coincidence; she woke early with a sudden clarity as to how to eliminate the unintended side effects of the broad-spectrum vaccine she's been developing, and went downstairs to run some models. Then she'd become distracted by the sight of Grant doing press-ups, and had completely forgotten her reason for leaving her bed.

Every morning after that, however, is entirely deliberate. She begins setting her alarm for six, giving herself enough time to brush her teeth, get dressed, and make some tea, and then treks across the base to join him in the cargo bay while he does his workout.

The view is certainly nothing to scoff at; on a purely aesthetic level, Grant's incredibly appealing. Tall, dark, and handsome, with the sort of well-defined musculature she only expects to find in anatomy textbooks, Grant can be safely categorized as _hot_, as her cousin Jessica would say. (Jessica is green with envy about Grant; _her_ soulmate is a military type as well, and he's insisting on keeping things platonic, because _Jess deserves better_, apparently. Jemma's confident of Jessica's ability to wear him down, but in the meantime, Jemma's just glad Grant isn't attempting that sort of nonsense.)

However, it's not (just) the view that has her out of bed so early every morning. On a personal level, she enjoys their morning sessions for much more important reasons. They play twenty questions every morning, going back and forth talking about themselves, and she feels as if she's starting to understand him, a little.

Grant…isn't what she was expecting, in a soulmate. He's so very serious, almost solemn, and unexpectedly lethal. It's not that he's capable of violence—of course he is, he's a _specialist_—so much as how obvious it is. There's a slightly dangerous edge to all of his movements, which makes it impossible to forget his training.

Jemma finds she rather likes it. She likes _him_.

She can tell he's a little uncertain, a little awkward. He doesn't seem to know what to do with her—he's holding himself back in an obvious way, all of his touches brief and deliberate. She thinks he's trying not to scare her, and she's charmed by it, if a little insulted that he thinks she'll scare so easily. Still, for a man whose adult life has, by his own admission, primarily consisted of dealing violence to people, it's no surprise that he's not entirely certain what to do with someone he doesn't _want_ to hurt. (And she does believe that he doesn't want to hurt her.)

Aside from that, though, it's difficult to get a read on him, at first, and their morning sessions help with that. She learns to recognize when Grant is making jokes—not an easy task, with a man whose sense of humor is so dry—and how to tell the difference between him hesitating because he doesn't want to tell her something and hesitating because he doesn't know how. She learns which topics are to be avoided, and which topics he'll share more on if gently pressed.

His little brother Ashton falls into the latter category, as she discovers on day six.

"He lives in Nebraska," Grant says, keeping his head down as he does his press-ups. He's not even slightly out of breath. It's very impressive. "Works in a hospital in Omaha."

"Is he a doctor?" Jemma asks, a little hopefully. She's not _that_ kind of doctor, but she knows enough about medicine to get by, and it will be a nice bit of common ground to start with when she meets Ashton.

"Yeah. Trauma surgeon."

"That's nice," she says happily. She can work with that.

Actually, she expects she'll be getting a lot of practice in trauma surgery, if the first two missions they've been on are any indication of what's to follow. Agent Coulson has already made it clear that they'll be turning to her for medical treatment—apparently he wants to avoid hospitals whenever possible. She does wonder why he didn't just hire a team medic, but she's not inclined to question him. She owes him for allowing her to remain on the team with Grant, after all.

But back to the issue at hand. "What about his soulmate…Claudia?"

"Claudia," Grant confirms. "She's a kindergarten teacher."

That's…less nice. Jemma likes the idea of children in _theory_, but in practice she has no idea what to do with them. No common ground with Claudia, apparently. Well, she'll find something. Jemma's very good at making people like her.

"You said that you don't see them very often?" she asks casually. Grant's very cagey on the subject of his family, as she discovered a few days ago. She spent nearly twenty minutes telling him about hers, while he barely gave her five sentences. Honestly, she's a little concerned by the way he clammed up when she asked about his parents. She doesn't like what it implies.

"Not really. But I go stay with them whenever I get put on medical leave," he says.

"In case you pull your stitches?" she teases gently, and it earns her a little laugh. She happily awards herself a mental point.

Grant shifts position to begin his sit-ups, and she frowns a little at the gauze that's revealed when the hem of his shirt lifts a bit.

The hijacking of the plane was…terrifying, honestly. Signing up for a field team, she expected that she and Fitz would be put in dangerous situations, but she underestimated just how frightening it would be. First turning around to see Fitz with a scalpel held to his throat, then being tied up in the cargo bay, then realizing that she would need to be involved in the attempt to take back control of the Bus…

And then Grant nearly got himself pulled out of the plane.

That was a horrible moment: clinging on to Fitz, watching helplessly as Grant was drawn toward the hole in the side of the Bus—the hole they _put_ there—knowing there was absolutely nothing she could do, unable to stop her brain from calculating the probability that he would get dragged into one of the engines…

She was positive she was about to see her soulmate die, less than three days after meeting him, and it was only Skye's quick thinking that prevented it.

Grant doesn't like Skye, she knows, for all that he's taken responsibility for her training. He's suspicious of her, of her motivation and her past and her loyalty to the team. But Jemma will always be grateful to Skye for saving Grant's life, and she's inclined to like her for that alone—to say nothing of how _fun_ Skye is.

"What about you?" Grant asks, pulling her from her thoughts. "I know you're an only child, but you said you had a cousin…?"

"Yes, a few," she confirms, setting her empty mug down. "I'm not very close to most of them, but Jessica is a bit of a prodigy, too, and we've always got along very well. We were…united in our oddity, I suppose."

"You see her often?"

"Hardly ever," she says, a little sadly. She misses Jess terribly. "We email all the time, though. She's very anxious to meet you."

Grant pauses. "You've…told your family about me?"

"I've told Jessica," she corrects. "Not my parents. Have you told Ashton about me?"

"Not yet," he says, sitting up and staying up. "We're not really the weekly phone call type."

"Fair enough," she says. She thinks she's pushed about as far on the family topic as he'll be willing to allow this morning, so she decides to change the subject. "If you won the lottery, what's the first thing you'd buy?"

It's not easy, coming up with topics of discussion every morning, so Jemma Googled "questions to get to know your soulmate" a few days ago and memorized the list. She'd be embarrassed, but she suspects Grant has done the same—if only because he keeps asking her questions from it.

Grant stands and pulls his gloves on. "A Porsche 918 Spyder."

"I've…never heard of it," she admits.

"It's a sports car," he says. "Limited edition. Production started this month—they're only going to make 918 of them."

"Hence the name," Jemma guesses. Then, "A sports car? Really?"

"I like cars," Grant says with a little shrug. "And it's a really nice one."

She laughs a little, amused by the oddly boyish response, as he moves to the punching bag, and then she's distracted by the play of muscles in his arms as he begins to hit it. As a whole, she abhors violence. She recognizes the necessity of it, but she joined SHIELD because she wants to _save_ lives, not see them ended. She has to admit, though, that Grant makes violence look very, very good.

Things are moving a little slower between them than she'd like—they haven't even properly _kissed_ yet, for goodness sake. She's been tempted, more than once, to just grab him and lay one on him, but she doesn't want to spook him. Grant obviously has no idea what to do with her, and will therefore require careful handling.

Actually, she gets the impression that that will remain true even after they've got past the initial stages of their relationship. She has a feeling she's going to be spending a lot of time carefully handling Grant and his apparent issues.

That's all right. She's a scientist; she's very much accustomed to waiting for results. And these results are absolutely worth her patience.


End file.
